You gotta wonder if anti-Trump Republicans are staged

Condemning the nastiness of Republican politics in the era of President Donald Trump, Sen. Jeff Flake on Tuesday announced he will serve out the remainder of his term but will not seek re-election in 2018.

The bombshell, which Flake, R-Ariz., intended to detail Tuesday afternoon on the Senate floor, will further roil Republican hopes of keeping the party's 52-seat Senate majority in the midterm elections of Trump's first term, when the president's party historically loses seats in Congress.

It also likely will upend the race for Flake's seat.

Flake, one of the Senate's more prominent critics of President Donald Trump, has been struggling in the polls.

President Trump won running as the anti-establishment guy. The guys who appear to be the anti-Trump GOP Establishment are slowly declaring they are not seeking re-election. It's not a coincidence. It could be because their positions have put them out of touch with their constituents and also out of contention for re-election. But these are the same guys who have no problem shifting right during primaries and left during elections. They are surely not so stupid that they can't shift now as needed to bolster their approval ratings. Why dig in their heels now? Just because of Trump? Just because they have to live up to their promises and they are not prepared to do so? Come on - they are more self-serving than that. Re-election is clearly all that matters and state polling (pardon the pun) trumps what CNN says about you as a senator.

So...what could possibly be going on with their establishment intransigence? Maybe, just maybe the GOP and president Trump have staged this as a way to shift the party to the right and getting out the vote (GOTV) for the 2018 midterm elections by firing up the Trump base. It would not be a dumb move. Not despite the lack of lockstep allegiance to president Trump, just maybe the GOP are smarter than they appear. One can hope, right?